Lori Loughlin and her teenage daughters could be triplets with their long, honey-colored hair and bright smiles. But though the actress looks every bit as beautiful as she did during her Full House days, she admits it isn't always easy to age in the spotlight.

Loughlin, who celebrated her 50th birthday last July, says she struggled with the milestone.

"The lead-up was the worst," she explains. "It's hard to get older as an actress, you see a lot of people, especially in L.A., chasing youth."

"My husband always says, 'Just age gracefully,' but sometimes I stand over the mirror and go, 'Well, if I just got a little tuck right there, it would be so much better,' " she adds of Mossimo Giannulli, the fashion entrepreneur she wed in 1997. "But you can't turn around and look 20 again."

Full House fans have always loved Uncle Jesse and Aunt Becky together – but even Becky herself can hardly believe the level of affection for the TV couple.

"It's caught me off guard lately," the actress, 50 – who has been married to designer Mossimo Giannulli for 16 years – told PEOPLE at her home in Beverly Hills earlier this month. "John and I had so much fun together, but even I am like, why are people so obsessed with these two?"

How obsessed are we talking? A dental technician once told the actress's daughter Olivia how much she looked like Lori Loughlin. "Well, that is my mom," Olivia told her, to which the technician replied, "Oh my God, I really wish she would have married John Stamos," Loughlin recalls with a laugh. "And Olivia was like, 'Does she realize what she just said to me?' I see how much people really want to believe that we existed."

Lori Loughlin is all about authenticity on her Hallmark Channel show When Calls the Heart – except for one pesky costume.

"They try every season to put me in a corset and I say 'Okay, I'll try it,' and I really, honestly only make it to lunchtime and then I have to take it off because I can't even breathe," the actress tells PEOPLE, laughing.

The series, which wraps its second season June 13, tells the story of women, including Loughlin's Abigail Stanton, living in a 19th-century coal-mining town.

Loughlin, 50, tells PEOPLE she will do the reunion episode and is eager to reunite with her former cast mates and longtime friends. "Doing that show was one of the best jobs I've ever had," she says. "It was just so much fun."

So to that end, the show's stars will be performing their duly-appointed press-related actions for the foreseeable future, which means we're confronted with moments like this: Lori Loughlin acting out scenes from the show with Andy Cohen.